>>40471292Bugbears are usually treated as more stealthy than hobgoblins, even though they're huge. So maybe they're mutant goblins who are adapted to a culture where everyone is small and sneaky. Every now and then a bugbear is born to a goblin mother, causing her to explode. About 3/4 of bugbears' offspring are goblins.

>>40471358I guess PF is trying to go from folklore. This is from wikipedia:

Its name is derived from a Middle English word "bugge" (a frightening thing), or perhaps the old Welsh word bwg (evil spirit or goblin), or old Scots "bogill" (goblin), and has cognates in German "bögge" or "böggel-mann" (goblin), and most probably also English "bogeyman" and American English "bugaboo".

In medieval England, the Bugbear was depicted as a creepy bear that lurked in the woods to scare children.

>>40471567It's an interesting concept.I think they -are- mutants of some kind, since hobgoblins were a magical mutation of goblins. When bugbears show up, they automatically seem to command goblins (since the lesser cousins fear their size and appetites) and it seems that hobgoblins come under their leadership, which I find strange since Hobgoblins are more organized.

>>40471292A lot of the art and minis I've seen of them have severed human bits as trophies. I guess something could be done with that. Maybe they practice sympathetic magic and believe that bits and bobs of worthy opponents will bestow their strengths on the wearer. Or maybe they're masters of psychological warfare and know what really gets humans annoyed.

Good idea. That makes them a bit more than some mid-level boss monster.

You know how classic kobolds can be bad-ass trap setting, guerrilla warfare, pains in the ass? It's like all the other humanoid monsters are well defined and bugbears are just bear like beefy goblins. They need something that makes them stand out.Like there is zero information about bugbear family organization. Somewhere it briefly mentions that they rarely take slaves. (I'm guessing that is because of their appetites, not enough food for slave population, unless they keep slaves for food.)

>>40471877Where goblins are all about sending waves of skirmishers to pile on enemies with each one trying not to be the one to get hit, and hobgoblins are all about lockstep and efficient maneuvers they drill for over and over, bugbears could be about getting in the enemy's head. Sneaking into camps and leaving messages just to prove they can, using disgusting or sacrilegious displays to goad enemies into overextending, abandoning useful territory for a chance to get at the enemy's noncombatants and loved ones

>>40472004>>40472449I'm not always bit on Pathfinder lore changes, but "bugbears as Slasher film killers" actually is a lot neater then "large brutes who work as shock troops who have a stealth bonus".

OK, Let's flesh this out a bit more. Perhaps their society values fear and intimidation more than other traits. Their god Hruggek sounds like he's all about fear. He has a cave in his realm in the second layer of Pandemonium, Cocytus, and it's surrounded by severed heads of various races, which continually cry his praises or beg for mercy, and gift him with powers against their respective peoples.

Could we come up with some bugbear tactics? Passive things they do as well as fuck with your lives sort of gambits? Also, what makes psychological warfare their societies thing that sets them apart? Is it something Hruggek taught them?

I was thinking of a passive gambit they they would do. Leaving maps in places that lead to massive trapped and locked chests. Once picked, the chest is full to the brim with only preserved, pierced, human hands, hacked off at the wrist.

>>40472570Maybe they don't think of power and history in the same way as their more militaristic cousins. From bugbears' perspectives, they're the fixed center of the world and everybody else acts around them. They don't destroy people; they allow people to destroy themselves. They keep no records of bugbear heroes, only of members of other races who crossed the bugbears and destroyed themselves because they succumbed to fear or hubris or a conflicting set of priorities. Bugbears love a good story of ever-escalating disaster befalling someone else, like the saga of Boatmurdered.

>>40472570I give ALL goblins origins in the Feywild (goblins are Faeries in folklore originally anyway) after the new DMG mentioning they can be found there.

After coming to the Material Plane goblins eventually evolved or (more likely) mutated into hobgoblins, which are smarter and more organized and make excellent soldiers.Said mutation was magical in nature, and likely involved someone thinking it was a great idea to use mutant goblins as troops against elves. This is why they ALWAYS attack elves and half-elves first; it's sort of programmed into them.

Bugbears are a further mutation coming from hobgoblins that returned to the Feywild, mutating for greater size and cunning but also for preternatural stealth; many mythological evil Faeries display incredible cruelty and magical hiding powers, so that was my basis.

Eventually some bugbears found their way back to the Material Plane, but never very many, which is why they can be frequently found working as scouts and shock-troops for hobgoblins.The reason they usually never try to take over hobgoblin legions is because the loot and food they get is more then enough to satisfy them; they're REALLY in it for the murder and fear they sow, not conquest like their ancestors. Their time in the Feywild warped them further, left them cruel and mad.

>>40472704I fiigure goblins and hobgoblins, while certainly violent, have sane, rational goals; goblins in the Feywild wanted to eke out territory in the dangerous endless violent wilderness of their home plane, and this desire translates to the Material Plane well.

Hobgoblins have the same desires, but are bigger, smarter, more organized and more efficient at it; goblins are cunning but are still a bit too like their faerie ancestors to stay organized long.

Bugbears on the other hand creep the shit out of both species. Whatever magic warped goblins into hobgoblins did NOT go over well with the Feywild. Or worse, maybe it DID and bugbears are just sort of the distilled qualities of all goblinoids in a huge package free of frills.

Goblins obey and fear bugbears, and hobgoblins make use of their talents, but neither really UNDERSTAND them. They're as strange and alien to them as Jason Vorhees is to us, the primary difference being that our society has no use for creatures like that but hobgoblins do.

>>40471292I can't add much, but, per the old Keep at the borderlands module (or the return to version). There is a bugbear tribe ruled by an aging bugbear that claims to be a prophet. He is set to be succeeded by one of his daughters in a similar religious rule format. So perhaps theocratic rule is common among bugbears. They also evidently get high on catnip and purr when happy.

>>40471358>>40471517>>40471904>>40472540One of my favorite pathfinder bits is a side feat thing bugbears can getWhenever you're sneaking around and you're aware of the target, AND you beat a stealth check by more than five, you can introduce a deliberate flaw in your hiding- a scratch down a window pane, a crunched branch, a whispered giggle, that forces the target to do a will save or get shaken.

>>40473039>get high on catnip and purrI also approve of this. As a cat owner, I have occasionally received gifts of a completely skinless rabbit covered in blood and missing two legs.

>>40473242What >>40473375 said, cats do that when they don't think a kitten (or a human) they care about knows how to hunt, it's easy prey for them to practice killing and let's them know that similar critters are food. You can get it to stop by killing one in front of it or bringing it a kill

They will also do that if they can't finish it. Sharing with the family is a natural instinct for cats. This also commonly happens with cats that are well fed and don't display full predatory behavior -- they'll instinctively catch something and play with it, and eventually kill it, but then not really seem to know what to do with it. Then, acting on a related instinct they'll drag it back to the other cats, uneaten. That doesn't sound like the case with this one, though, since the cat had already eaten a big chunk of the rabbit.

>and it seems that hobgoblins come under their leadership, which I find strange since Hobgoblins are more organized.

Nah, dude. Hobgobs will just about never do that. Usually they do the opposite, and try to enslave bugbears and use them for brute strength, and they retain leadership. They're essentially nazi-tier race supremacists.

Horror movie ambush hunter cannibals is cool - in addition to stealthiness I reckon they can stay perfectly still for hours, like snakes - but making them random mutants is kind of a cop-out. Lets say they're to goblins and hobgoblins as ogres are to humans: a more predatory, less organised species. Like dragons and vampires, they are smarter and longer lived than goblins, but lack real societies of their own - outside of mating season they stay away from each other. No gods as such either, though they tend to develop an idiosyncratic set of superstitions and petty magics based around headhunting.

The extent of their co-operation with other goblinoids is exaggerated, they nest in/near gobbo warrens/cities and will preferentially attack better tasting races. For that reason the gobbos put up with them preying on their kids during peacetime, but it's not really a formal arrangement.

They shadow warbands too, like proto-dogs skulking around the edges of cro-magnon campfires, and in those cases shamans will often make gruesome deals with them. But the normal arrangement is more like, you break into a goblin outpost, and there's a bugbear hiding under the floorboards: it was waiting till the guards went to sleep to eat one of them, but you're such a tempting target...

I love how everyone assumes that because Gygax or Arneson or whoever scribbled out the Monster Manual used a name horribly butchered from Mythology (see the Medusa/Gorgon situation..), that there are deep cultural identities to the hollow cardboard-cutouts that are used to allow the basement dwellers the chance to flex their need to murder something and steal it's things.

Pathfinder has done a great job at describing the difference in goblinoids:"Goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears, despite having superficial similarities, each represent a different face of evil. Hobgoblins are ordered and methodical in their evil, forming vast armies, warbands, and despotic nations. Goblins are the primal evil, seeking only cruelty and petty victimization as they can find it, be that among their own kind or against their neighbors. Yet the evil personified by the bugbear may be the most terrifying, for they actively seek to inflict pain and suffering in the most destructive ways possible. When a hobgoblin kills, it's because of tradition and order. When a goblin kills, it's for fun. But when a bugbear holds its blade, it kills only when it can be assured that the murder will cause maximum pain and suffering to those its weapon does not touch; to a bugbear, the true goal of murder is to strike not at the victim, but at those who held the victim dear."

They are the monster under the bed or in the closet terrifying the children, but doesn't let the adults find it and only when he has ensured he can't get any more out of it he kills the child to let the adults know that it was right all along.

or he's the one to give the mother the choice whether it kills her or the child and lets her sacrifice herself for the child, only to ensure the child that it is responsible for her death and let's it live but assures that one day it will be back for more.

they even made variants to help these kinds of things: one that can turn invisible to everyone except one person. one that can turn into everyday objects. one that can turn into a puddle of mud.

When bugbears are involved you can never be sure what's going on and nowhere is safe. It's like the Joker, only there's an entire race of him.

A few weeks ago (live on a farm) one of our cats caught a mole (big sucker to). Brought it around the house and left it. Later on that day our oldest cat, feeble, etc. He finds it. He apparently thinks HE caught it.

He sat there calling as loudly as he could so that everyone would come by and look at what he caught. I've never seen an animal project 'pride' so obviously. He really thought he was king shit.

>>40471292WTF is going on in the pic? The woman looks content with this monster? What did she grow up with a tribal group that raped her each night and the bugbear just happened to to kill and eat all the villagers but her? Now does she follow him like a pet? I can only imagine a dark but shriek like tale but with a bugbear not a orge. What the hell /tg/

>>40479839Why you gotta assume the worst?Look at that protective grip he's got on her, and observe how she's holding on to his harness for security.This fine, upstanding Bugbear has just rescued that poor villager from some would-be ransomers and is discouraging the more cowardly amongst them from pressing the issue further.

>>40479839yeah, all the content women I know have dead soulless eyes and their limp dirty bodies are chained to a creature 10 times their own mass by an iron neck collar thicker than their own spinal bones.

>>40480066Not all love is bright eyed and full of smiles. Sometimes love means not being allowed to leave the house, or putting on makeup to cover the bruises on your arms. Your princess who meets Prince Charming might be eager and willing, but that doesn't mean the princess captured by the beast will never be compliant. It's easy to learn to love something you can't escape. Even if you can't learn to enjoy it, you can tell yourself you do. You might even believe it, when you close your eyes at night.

>>40472904>Goblins obey and fear bugbears, and hobgoblins make use of their talents, but neither really UNDERSTAND them. They're as strange and alien to them as Jason Vorhees is to us, the primary difference being that our society has no use for creatures like that but hobgoblins do.

>Also, what makes psychological warfare their societies thing that sets them apart?

"A coward dies a thousand deaths. A hero dies but one. A goblin takes a single life, a bugbear claims them all."

It's never about killing the body. Goblins do that with their spears, their slings, their gnawing teeth. Nor is it about breaking an army, tearing down a community, conquering a town. That's what hobgoblins train for, day after day.

Bugbears crave the little deaths, those tender moments when courage breaks and will shatters, when the prey understands they have died yet again. Killing a mortal is merely a matter of flesh, but destroying valor, grinding resolve, and slaying hope? That is a proper offering to the god of fear.

>>40474392Is english a second language to you or are you just kind of stupid? Because it seems like you don't understand what the point of the thread is. Bugbears are exactly what you say they are, this thread is an attempt to flesh them out.

Bugbears are one of the most feared races in my setting. They are incredibly strong and tough, and stealthier than other races known for their sneakiness, such as Drow or Halflings.

However, they are all utterly insane, and have a compulsion to terrify and murder. Other Goblinoids are afraid of them, and only work with them at great distances, tempted by what Bugbear assassins or shock troopers could potentially do. The problem is a Bugbear would prefer to terrify a guard over the course of his shift before killing him, rather than simply slash his throat, and they are incapable, no matter what is offered, of staving off these urges for long.

Bugbears do not appear to have villages or families, to the best anyone knows, and they have been seen to hide in wait for days without apparently eating or drinking anything. They may be far more magical than anyone suspects, emerging fully formed in some unseen shadow, rather than being born.

>>40472570Which explains why they eat children. It has the added effect of the psychological effect it has on the adults. The child says he or she sees a monster, and by the time the parent looks out the window, or in the closet, or what have you, the bugbear has already sneaked away. The parent assures the child there's no monster. The next day, the parent finds the child's head. The kind of anguish that would cause, of knowing the monster was real, and that you could have stopped this, that's their real weapon.

>>40485753This is my Bugbears except Hobgoblins are not afraid of them, they know how to use them. They let them go out and do their killing but for the most part treat them like animals, even torturing them if they do something they don't like.

Hobgoblins are also responsible for their creation. Hobgoblins are actually quite distantly related to Goblins, and through genetics and magic they take baby Goblins and turn them into Bugbears through very horrific things. This drives the Bugbears mad, but they are completely under the thumb of Hobs so they rarely rebel, and those that do are very publicly punished to set examples.

As for what the Hobs use them for, muscle (obviously) and shock troops, but mostly use them as scouts for their warbands.

Has anyone here read Orcs of Thar? I've heard that a lot of the material is tongue in cheek, but it's supposed to go deeper into the goblinoid races. I'm curious if anyone has read what they said about bugbears.

/tg/, you've made me love these fuckers.Bugbears to me have always just been, "well, there's these other guys, I guess they're goblinoids too or something" and I never really knew why anyone bothered with them; but this thread just... god damn.

Right now my players are in a not!China populated by goblinoids. It's kind of an authoritarian state where hobgoblins run everything and keep the others in line, and goblins know kung fu because they're not allowed weapons.. The party met an old female bugbear healer who treated a party member's snake bite, and one of the players seemed surprised that there was even such a thing as female bugbears. So everything has been peaceful so far, but I've been waiting for the perfect moment to start introducing the sort of overtly evil shit that the government is trying to keep in check. What would be a good way for more civilized goblinoids to satisfy their need for carnage, either in secret or in some kind of annual carnival?

>>40514977I think OP meant they're fleshed out in modules. Bugbears are mostly used as that monster thats slightly harder to kill than the rest of the monster fodder. Although I do remember a Hobgoblin thread awhile back with lots of responses.